The crow's-nest

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

“Nothing about you, Thisbe.”

But in order to ascertain what I really have said about her,—she has a hatred of publicity and I have to be very careful,—she goes privily when I am immersed in tea, and possesses herself of the whole.

“But you are not going to die,” she exclaimed with dismay and disapproval. “We have made quite other arrangements. You can’t possibly die, now.”

“Not immediately, in so far as I am aware,” I respond. “But there is no harm in looking forward to it a little,—on a day like this.”

Chapter VII

THERE are many methods of gardening. I have known people who were not content with anything but actually digging and weeding, grubbing up the curly wet worms and the tough roots, and bending their own backs over bulbs and seedlings. That is the thorough method, and though it is a little like sweeping and scrubbing out yourself the rooms your guests are to occupy,—and I suppose that would be a pleasure to some people,—it is the method that commands the most respect. Compared with it I feel that I cannot ask respect for mine; I must be content with admiration. My gardening is done entirely with scissors, scissors and discretion, both easy to use. With scissors and discretion I walk about my garden, snipping off the flowers that are over. Masuddi comes behind, holding my umbrella, Sropo with a basket picks up the devoted heads. I thus ignore causes and deal directly with results, much the simplest and quickest way when life is complicated by its manifold presentations and the cares of a family. And the results are wonderful,—I can heartily recommend this method of gardening to any one who wants to compass the most charming effect with the least exertion. A plant is only a big bouquet, and what bouquet does not instantly redouble its beauty when you take away the one or two flowers that have withered in it? A faded flower is too sad a comment upon life to be allowed to remain even on its parent stem, besides being detrimental and untidy like a torn petticoat. There should be nothing but joy in the garden, joy and freshness and coquetry, and the subtlest, loveliest suggestion of art; anon by the diligent application of scissors and discretion I leave a flood of these things behind me every day. No doubt it is regrettable that the withered rags in Sropo’s basket represent the joy and coquetry of yesterday; this is the lesson of life, however, and one cannot take account of everything. Also you lay yourself open to the charge of being a mere lady’s-maid to your garden; but worse things than that are said about nearly everybody.

Among the pansies I confess I feel rather an executioner with my scissors, though there a rigorous policy most rewards me. Nothing is so slatternly as a pansy bed where some of the family are just coming out into the world, and others are beginning to weary of it and others are going shamelessly to seed. My pansies must all be properly coiffured and fit to appear in society; when they begin to pull shawls over their heads and take despondent views I remove them. Moreover, under this unremitting discipline, they will go on and on, I shall have four months of pansies; it is in every way the right thing to do.

And yet it is a remorseless business, turning up the little faces to see if they have lived long enough to be ready for the guillotine. They look straight at you, and some of them shrink and some beseech, and some are mutely resigned. I am no stern Atropos, I am weak before the fate I bring and often let it go; and if by mistake I snip off a bud I hurry on and try to forget it. Has the divinity who lays us low also, I wonder, his moments of compunction—does he ever hold his hand and say “One more day”? Or does he snip here and there at random “just choosing so”? Oh Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos, I do not like your rôle, I am glad I am not an omnipotent Whim; I hope my garden thinks better of me than that. The prevailing expression among pansies, by the way, is that of apprehension; I hope this is a botanical fact and not confined to my pansies.

Nothing is more annoying in a small way in this world than to see your tastes reflected in those whom you consider inferior to yourself. You would rather not share anything with such persons, even a preference. I have to submit to this vexation. There are others hereabouts, whom I have got into the habit of looking down upon, who have exactly my idea of gardening. I hasten to say that they are not people in the ordinary sense of the term. Bold, indeed, would be the non-official worm, in this bureaucratic stronghold, who should point to any gazetted creature about him and say “That is a lesser thing than I.” Society would smile and decline to be deceived. For this is an ordered Olympus, the gods go in to dinner by Regulation, their rank and pay is published in Kalends which anybody may buy, and the senior among them are diligently worshipped by the junior as “brass hats.” No, it would certainly not be for the Tiglath-Pilesers who never sent back a parcel to the draper’s tied up in red tape in their lives, not having a yard of it in the house for any purpose, to give themselves airs over persons who use it every day. But even a non-official may look down upon a monkey. My offensive imitators are monkeys.

I would not object if they followed my example in their own jungle garden, but they come and do it in mine. Be sure I never catch them at it. When I am operating there myself they often leap crashing into the rhododendrons on the khud and sit among the branches watching me, whole troops of them, but at a stone or a compliment they are off, bounding with childish unintelligible curses down the khud. It is in the early dawn before any one is awake or about, that they come with freedom and familiarity to walk where I walk and do as I do. I can perfectly fancy them mincing along in impertinent caricature—I do not mince—holding up their tails with one hand and with the other catching and clawing haphazard at the flowers as they imagine I do. Two hours later, when I come out to mourn and storm over the withering fragments on the drive not a monkey vexes the horizon. And they do what some people think worse than this. They come and tear Tiglath-Pileser’s carefully bound grafts from their adopted stems, and the young shoots from his little new apple-trees which have travelled all the way from England to live here with us and share our limitations and our shelf. These were only planted in February, and one of them, a beginner not three feet high, had six of its very own apples on it yesterday. It is not a thing that happens often, apples as soon as that, and six; and Simla is a place where there is so little going on that we were more excited about them, perhaps, than you would be at home. They were small apples but they had to grow, and they were growing yesterday. This morning while we still dreamed of our apples, a grey langur with a black face ate the whole crop at a sitting. So now we can neither bake them nor boil them nor measure them for publication. They have disappeared in a grey langur with a black face, and though I heartily hope they will inconvenience him I have very little expectation of it; the punitive laws of nature matter little to monkeys.